Tuesday, 11 December 2012

Ricoh (Malaysia) Sdn Bhd, a leader in the office solutions industry held the ‘Make a Change in 100 Minutes’ comic contest finale today at Berjaya Times Square. A total of 20 finalists were selected based on several criteria, including the relevancy of the entries to the theme and adherence to the terms and conditions of participation to win amazing prizes worth RM 10,000 in total.

The Ricoh Comic Contest Finale was structured differently from other contest. Rather than letting the results to be determined by Facebook votes only, Ricoh’s management has also voted for their favourite comic strips. The top 20 selected finalists were:-

Participants

1.Amir Atiq

2.Anuar Hassan

3.Chai Ying Leih

4.Elaine Teo Suat Tee

5.Ernest Ng

6.Eve Fang

7.Muhammad Firdaus bin Husain

8.Lam Xiu Jing

9.Lee Ching Ching

10.Muhammad Luqman bin Muhaiyuddin

11.Megat Hafiz

12.Megat Arif

13.Puteri Nurul Nabila

14.Mohd Fikri bin Azman

15.Mohd Yusof bin Sa’ari

16.Norida Kadiron

17.Raymond Chee Vui Haur

18.Tan Lay Khim

19.Tan Wai Kit

20.Tinesh Kumar

“When we created this event, we want to challenge the public to imagine what they could change and tell us about it by expressing them through comic. The idea was to bring out the latent talent in people and challenge them to create something positive,” said Peter Wee, Chief Operating Officer of Ricoh Malaysia.

These 20 comic strips went through another voting session during the finale day. From 10.30am, the public were seen to vote for their favourite comic strip and took part in a host of activities such as caricature drawing, lucky draw sessions and Q&A contests.

The famously-known comic artist for the “Kuso High School” series and received the “Best Comic Strip” award from Mandarin Comics Society of Malaysia last year was present in the event. “The quality of the comics that made it into the Top 20 is impressive and overall, we’re impressed with the quality of the artwork. From this, it’s certain there is a lot of talent out there in Malaysia and hopefully this contest will encourage the participants to hone their skills,” said Keith Teo, a member of the judging panel.

Anuar Hasan emerged as the grand prize winner and walked away with RM5, 000 cash and an SP 100 SF e (print, scan, fax and photocopy functions), while Ernest Ng won the title of 1st runner up and took home RM 3,000 with an SP 100 SU e (print, copy and scan functions). Meanwhile, Firdaus Husain emerged as the 2nd runner up and he took home RM 1, 500 with an SP 100 e (print function) respectively. Further to that, Hou Ee Fan got the most “Like” comic strip in Facebook and took home a Ricoh CX6 camera.

“It was not easy selecting a winner out of the 20 entries, but we had to be stringent in applying ourselves to the task,” said Peter Wee. “I feel that all those who have submitted their comics are already winners!”